The Solution Focused Approach

The primary emphasis is to assist the client to articulate and define a desired future, and will help client to develop thinking and take action pathways that will result in the client achieve or approach their desired future state

Asking questions that focuses on the client’s strengths and helps the client to build solutions rather than focusing on their problems

Change the viewing to change the doing. Change will occur when the coach facilitates the client in taking a different perceptive of what is going good for them. Reframing is a process of looking at the situation from a different perspective. Looking through a new lens can foster a different understanding of the situation and often opens up new ways of thinking and new ways of behaviour.

The SF approach does not seek to resolve past injuries, or effect character change. SF will help the client to find their own resourcefulness and bring this in line with the clients intended goal.

Explicit goalsetting is a huge part of the solution focused approach as S.F is outcome focused so it is important to identify preferred outcomes and specific goals so that the client can have a clear idea about where they are going and taking specific action steps in order to reach their goal.

Scaling is used to subjectively measure experience, and can used from 1 to 10 scale to see how close or how far away the client is from the intended goal they set out to do. Scaling can be used (a) to identify process towards their goal, (b) clear up any fuzzy goals, (c) identify resources available to the client and (d) will articulate small steps towards the goal.

Miracle question helps the client to recognise change and shows them that the intended goal is reachable but be careful about how to approach when asking this question.

Do more of what works will help the client to do more of what is going well for them, and helps when the client can recognise that the problem does not exist.

Using small steps can lead to big changes. The big emphasis here is doing small easy to achieve action steps, and making small positive changes rather than trying to make massive changes all at once.

Giving compliments and reframing must be done from a position of genuine positive regard and desire to really understand and move towards the clients intended goal.

Each S.F session should end with articulated action steps and get the client to try small mini experiments that are doable and engaging to the client so they can reach their goal.

Solution focused approach has won vast awards worldwide for practitioners who adapt its techniques and principles including education, team coaching and development, children, support groups and also business and management.